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CHRIS JULIN: Maybe you think that joke was written about you, you know the one. I feel like the world is a tuxedo, and I'm a pair of old brown shoes. Well, Paul Lundgren feels your pain, and it gave him the idea for a party, a party for people like you.

PAUL LUNDGREN: Geeks, geeks of all shapes and sizes. Nerds, dweebs, dorks, spazzes, doofs.

CHRIS JULIN: Don't be offended. Paul Lundgren says everyone's a geek, somehow or another. Take him, for example. He doesn't look anything like the textbook geek. He even played on his high school football team, but he was also on the school AV squad. Paul Lundgren says, to be human is to be a geek.

PAUL LUNDGREN: My geek moment today, for example was, I was going to the post office. As I got out of the car, I was walking behind a truck, and I saw a rather lovely young woman coming out of Walgreens. And I kind of looked at her and just smashed my leg into a trailer hitch.

You're given two choices at that moment then. You can either act cool like, [HUMMING] (SINGING) I'm cool. Or you can go [SCREAMING] and cry like a baby. And that's the geek choice. And that's what we're all about is, we're not covering anything up at a Geek Prom. It's spastic fits of clumsy dancing.

CHRIS JULIN: The Geek Prom is at the NorShor Theater in downtown Duluth. The evening will include the coronation of a King and Queen Geek. There will be video games where half a dozen techno geeks can square off against each other.

And unlike the high school prom, there will be a bar. Scott Lunt is the other promoter of the Geek prom. And he says a guy named Lefty is concocting some special geek drinks.

SCOTT LUNT: The pocket protector is one drink that will be there. The Leonard Nimoy, several drinks along those lines. And actually the pocket protector tastes like a pocket protector.

CHRIS JULIN: And of course, there's music for the clumsy dancing. Super D and the Double Chucks start off the evening. Then the Twin Cities band, Vinnie and the Star Dusters, will play distorted garage band versions of classical music. Paul Lundgren says there's a lot of geek music out there, from Devo to the Talking Heads to Weird Al Yankovic.

PAUL LUNDGREN: And there's this great boy band, I think they're Japanese. They have this song called "Yatta." They have a video on the web where the guys are all-- they all have their tighty-whities on. And they have a fig leaf on front of the tighty-whities. And they all just dance around like, (SINGING) yatta, yatta, yatta, yatta, yatta, yatta, yatta, yatta. It's so easy.

(HAPPATAI, "YATTA!")

Happy-go-lucky

We are the world

We did it

Hyu hyu hyu hyu

Osu osu osu osu

It's awesome.

CHRIS JULIN: The theme of the Geek prom is, we are through being cool. Paul Lundgren says the whole point is to relax and forget trying to be hip.

PAUL LUNDGREN: No matter how much of a geek you are, there will be someone there who's a bigger geek than you, unless you end up being King or Queen Geek. And to be the best at anything, that can't be bad, can it?

CHRIS JULIN: Lots of people in Duluth are talking about the Geek Prom, and Scott Lunt thinks the crowd will be in the hundreds. But he says there are still plenty of tickets left.

SCOTT LUNT: Duluth isn't a get-out-early-buy-the-ticket kind of town. Actually, by Friday, people start to buy tickets. But we've sold two tickets. That's pretty good. High five. Woohoo! [CHUCKLES]

CHRIS JULIN: The first annual geek prom is Saturday night at the NorShor Theater in Duluth. This is Chris Julin, Minnesota Public Radio.

[MUSIC PLAYING]